Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alan Vengel is the founder of Vengel ConsultingGroup, a global firm that has helped hundreds ofFortune 1000 companies improve employee performanceand boost overall organizational success.He is the author of The Influence Edge: How to PersuadeOthers to Help You Achieve Your Goals andcoauthor of Sprout! Everything I Need to Know aboutSales I Learned from My Garden. Vengel lives inNorthern California.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

20 Minutes to a Top Performer

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Contents

Chapter One

coach \ kch \ v. to train intensively as by instruction and demonstration; n. one who instructs or trains a performer or team of performers; a private tutor

When leaders use the wrong tone of voice—a voice that's tentative and unclear—they give signals to everyone else, and, as a result, teams can get off course quickly. As these signals spread from top to bottom, suddenly it becomes okay for the rest of the team to be tentative and vague as well. It's easier for everybody; if no one knows what the stakes really are, then they can't really be all that high, and we can all relax.

Coaching is the opposite of vague; it's about clarity—for you, for the organization, and for your people. In his work writing about corporate courage in such books as Right Risk and Courage Goes to Work, author Bill Treasurer talks about a concept called "Jump First," which means that leaders need to set the standard when it comes to clarity. In other words, they need to be good role models for the kind of behavior they want their team to exhibit.

Unfortunately, this continues to be a companywide issue across the country. According to Lake Research Partners, a leading public opinion research firm, "Employees don't know where they stand on what their leaders think about their performance. The research also states that employees not only don't get the feedback to improve performance but 33 percent state they don't get the recognition for any success!"

If a leader is wishy-washy when it comes to feedback and recognition, his team will be wishy-washy about expectations and performance. If a leader is direct and to the point, providing both feedback and recognition, her team will come to see this as standard operating procedure and will rise to this level as well.

Author Ferdinand Fournies collected information on thousands of leaders and managers and concluded that there are several reasons why employees do not get the results they are looking for. The number one reason? Employees don't know what they are supposed to do! (And a close second: they don't know why they are supposed to do it!)

An October 2008 Wall Street Journal article cites research by the Hay Group detailing what leaders need to do to manage more effectively, especially if they tend to micromanage. These findings support the following three principles of quick, focused conversations that you will learn, practice, and master in 20 Minutes to a Top Performer:

1. State clear expectations. This saves time and helps people know what success looks like.

2. Encourage questions and suggestions. This gets all parties involved in solutions.

3. Offer constructive feedback. This ensures that employees can hit the target.

So the tone of your 20-Minute Coaching Conversation must be clear and to the point; clarity should be first and foremost. The leader is demonstrating how coaching communication should be done—leading by example, so to speak. And in the work I have been doing, I have found that leaders do set the tone for the kind of communication that people have with one another. The entire team will pick up on the mindset of the leader.

You can see this research in real time simply by looking objectively at your own office. Is it hectic and frenzied, but competent and efficient? If so, chances are that's your own personal leadership style. Is it ordered and quiet? Loud and coarse? Rude and ambitious? Calm and calculated? The apple doesn't far fall from the tree, and it's important to see the strengths and weaknesses of the team as your own—and vice versa.

Managers really do have a lot of influence on their people, and they are always surprised by how closely they are watched for clues on how to act and behave. People will do as the leader does. Having productive 20-Minute Coaching Conversations sends a clear message to the team that we will be purposeful with our conversations and conscious of their effects.

Few activities are as damaging to pace and progress as unfulfilling conversations. Wasted words spend breath, time, and productivity with little or no return on investment; conscious, active, and clear conversations boost morale and productivity by sending a clearer signal to your people about deliverables and expectations.

Research indicates that not only is coaching becoming less effective, but it's taking longer and longer to produce less and less. In a study by BlessingWhite, a survey of 710 managers found that 33 percent felt that "coaching is too time-consuming." In a global survey, up to 42 percent of 2,000 managers around the world indicate that coaching is taking too long. Time is precious; 29 percent of leaders complain that they just have too many direct reports for time- intensive coaching.

I know what you're thinking: "With all that's on my plate, with as many employees as I have, now you're telling me to hit them up one-on-one for better results? Do you know how long that's going to take?"

I absolutely know how long it's going to take because I've been sharing my 20-Minute Leader philosophy with managers all over the country for years. What I've learned is that the less time you have the more effective you have to make every minute. Trust me, these 20 minutes could pay off in ways that include higher ROI, more effective employees, better sales— you name it.

More specifically, you don't have the time not to do it.

At the end of the day, we are all here to get work done. Creating a winning template for your own 20-Minute Coaching Conversations merely sends the message that you care about productivity to the point of being clear, concise, and compelling in your day-to-day interactions with staff and team members. In turn, they will act accordingly.

Managers who are more open and straightforward in their business dealings build credibility with their direct reports. When they have the courage to say what they need in a direct, no-nonsense manner, people know where they stand and what is expected of them. Again, the key word here is clarity. When the leader is a role model for clear, direct communication, the message to the rest of the team is that we can be clear and direct with one another.

Push Behaviors

Behaviors that help managers be clear and direct are what we call Push behaviors. In other words, they are behaviors that "push" against one another to achieve the desired result of clarity.

In our surveys while conducting research with more than 4,300 managers and employees over the last five years, my colleagues and I have found that more than 73 percent of respondents want two key things from their leaders at work:

1. More direction

2. Direction that is specific and to the point

People really want to know what others want from them, and one of the biggest complaints these respondents had was not knowing what their leaders wanted from them specifically. We have a behavior model that we use to help managers be more specific and direct, and it works around this Push energy. And it's not really as harsh as it sounds—it's really just being able to say exactly what you want.

For example, here are three Push...